


WIRE FENCE WIRE FENCE WIRE WIRE WIRE

by Allegory



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Awesome, Cherik - Freeform, M/M, charles doesn't cope, erik is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 14:44:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13215999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allegory/pseuds/Allegory
Summary: The sunlight melted like an orange chocolate bar over his hair, sticky and sweet. The real taste of him was unpleasant, rancid as maggots on raw meat. But when they kissed hard enough Charles could make out the earth on his tongue, grass after the rainstorm.





	WIRE FENCE WIRE FENCE WIRE WIRE WIRE

He supposes it was meant to happen.

Charles, this world, always at odds. The pain climbing, swallowing mountains in its wake. It never ends. When he thinks _this is it,_ this is as bad as the night tremors and palpitations can get, it’s worse. Blood starts to spill in his vomit; he starts _remembering,_ the burns on the little girl’s skin, rows of people locked in cages for dogs, gunfire sweeping across his ears. A mother’s loving touch. Candles, flickering.

_Wire fence wire fence wire fence._

Tears fall from his eyes. His cheeks are red enough to have been sunburnt. He’s in seven hundred people at once, their past and present amalgamated and the sorrow, the sorrow that never ceases. Erik, Erik. The golden ring on his finger catches a glint of moonlight when he runs his hand over the bedsheet.

Once ago someone had lain by his side. Ketone breath. Grease under his nails, rust. Blood or iron? Blood and iron.

Charles pushes off the bed into his wheelchair, breath ragged through his teeth. A year ago, people flocked his room. Raven and Hank took watch over him. This isn’t a disability. Disabilities have prospects, however marginal. It’s pain. Incredible. Charles marvels sometimes at how intensely his heart fights against it, tries desperately to heal him. He prays every day that it'll give up on him, that he'll die with the knowledge that people have moved on. Erik had always warned him about that. In the blissful dawn that fluttered over the horizon, sharing his space, chapped lips not quite wetted: 

_People are monsters._

_You are a beautiful one, then._

                _And the others?_

 

He’s gone again, nerveless feet against the ceramic tiles of his bathroom but gone. His arm dangles over the bathtub, hipbone grinding against the floor. Erik had been here once, maybe, or maybe Charles had fashioned him out of his mind. It’s a terrifyingly precipitous place to live in, but he seems to dive back there all the time.

Screws drip out of his arm and into the bathtub. They pool in the drain and they whispter as the winds whistle his way:

_We’re here for you._

_WIRE FENCE WIRE FENCE WIRE WIRE WIRE_

Pills. Try pills that fly back out his throat. Try not eating, but the pounds add on. He’s fat; Erik would love him regardless, would hold him in those palms riddled with welts and callouses. It’s the damn pain, he’s not brushing his teeth, screws start to sprout out of his gum line too. Rickety teeth, yellow, a bloated belly and the too-cold skin that anoints him a corpse. He’s almost there.

Erik’s not on the other side. That’s a child’s fantasy. Charles has never felt the pain of being a child, of having that love and affection stripped away. Sometimes he wonders if he ought to count his blessings for it.

Oh, Erik.

He swallows his ring. Does it consciously in his wheelchair along with the tobacco in an unrolled cigarette. His body sags, breathless, _stop._ His mind, his GODDAMN mind takes over again. It listens to his body and pretty soon he’s brushing again, foam bubbling off his lips. Hadn’t they met like this? Cold bodies in saltwater, his hands clutched around Erik’s waist, _stop._ _You have to let go._

He shits out the ring and flushes it down the toilet.

                _When this is over, you’ll take me somewhere?_

                _Auschwitz._

                _You bastard._

                Kissed like they needed to swallow each other, live and breathe in the other’s warmth. At least the absence of it.

They never got to Auschwitz. They did elope to Cuba, though, and Charles remembers the curl of his lips, the half-hearted dimple on his cheek. The sunlight melted like an orange chocolate bar over his hair, sticky and sweet. The real taste of him was unpleasant, rancid as maggots on raw meat. But when they kissed hard enough Charles could make out the earth on his tongue, grass after the rainstorm. Such a beautiful monster, this man of his, gone.

Charles dies, finally, but it’s sharp and sudden and his last thought is the screw in the wall that never goes in. 

**Author's Note:**

> happy FUCKING new year. fucking jesus. may i have the strength to kms in 2018


End file.
